


knifey spoony

by socallmedaisy



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-22
Updated: 2012-11-22
Packaged: 2017-11-19 06:35:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/570280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/socallmedaisy/pseuds/socallmedaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for anon, who asked what i thought their first friday night after the break up was like.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. but i couldn't find a knife so i had to use a spoon

**Author's Note:**

> title from the dingus kahn song

_Santana_

She used to think her classes finishing early on Friday was some sign that her abuela’s god was smiling on her because it meant she could make it back to Lima in time for dinner with Brittany, but now she’s pretty sure it means all those things her abuela said about her last year were true, and that this is just the latest in a long line of jokes god is playing on her. 

Like falling in love with her best friend and joining the glee club hadn’t been bad enough.

She ducks through the door quickly when her last class finishes, avoiding two of the girls from the cheer squad before they can round on her and ask her if she’s going to help out with the fundraiser over the weekend. She’s been lacking in school spirit lately, and it’s not a football weekend, so they can suck it. Not that she’d say that to their faces, but she’s pretty sure they get the hint.

She did wonder if PTSD brought about by cheer uniforms could be considered a valid reason for letting her out of practice for a while at the start of the week. Red and black isn’t so far away from red and white, especially when you’re being tossed up to the top of a pyramid and can’t really see straight.

Maybe that argument would work a little better if she wasn’t still wearing Brittany’s Cheerio jacket but whatever, it’s cold in Kentucky, so.

+

She doesn’t know what to do. She’s halfway to the parking lot behind her dorm building before she remembers she has no reason to go home, and she switches direction, going to get a bagel from Einstein Bros instead. 

She orders the first thing she sees on the menu and then shoves it into her bag for later without bothering to check they got the order right. She’s not even hungry, but she’s pretty sure this is how functional humans are supposed to act if they don’t want anyone to ask them why they’ve lost their appetite recently.

Everywhere she looks there’s some boy and girl holding hands or sitting together or making out, and she wants to roll her eyes, but she can’t for some reason, like they just won’t co-operate with her.

She bumps into some football looking guy and his girlfriend on her way out and takes a step back when he says, “Watch where you’re going!” like he actually means it.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, swallowing back what she really wants to say, and then sidesteps them as she heads for the door.

\+ 

She passes the noticeboard out in the quad as she’s walking back to her room, and her eyes catch on the poster announcing open auditions for the drama club’s winter musical. 

Her feet stop, and she knows that all the drama majors will end up with the main parts, but it doesn’t stop her from glancing at the date and time before she starts to move again.

Not that she has room in her schedule, but it’s nice to remember that she used to be good at something.

+

Her roommate’s out when she gets back to the dorm, and she just drops her bag onto her desk and flops backwards onto her bed, bouncing a little from the force. She lies on her back for a while, listening to the obnoxiously loud ticking sound coming from Melissa’s alarm clock on the other side of the room.

It kind of sounds like it’s counting down to something, only she has no idea what it is.

She sighs and rolls onto her side, pulling the blanket up over her head like when she and Brittany used to make blanket forts as kids. And as not kids too, like the time last year when they spent two days over winter break building a blanket fort in Brittany’s basement, and then spent another day curled up in it together, pretending nothing else existed but the two of them.

It’s not the same in the dark without Brittany, but it still keeps the rest of the world out, and that’s good enough for now.

+

Melissa comes home just as she’s starting to fall asleep, and then the blanket is being tugged away from her and she has to blink against the light.

“That’s like a five year old’s best hide and seek spot, how old are you?” Melissa asks, when Santana just glares at her and reaches for the covers.

“Who said I was hiding?” Santana snaps back, and Melissa just gives her a look, which, okay, she’s probably earned the right to somewhere between coming home from class to find Santana taking down the pictures of Brittany with tears streaming down her face, and the hour Santana had spent sobbing later that night when she told her everything, but it still doesn’t make it any less annoying.

“Little kids across the land,” Melissa says easily, going over to drop her stuff on her side of the room and kick her shoes off. “I can pretend I can’t see you if you like. I have to read two chapters of my econ textbook before class later.”

“Whatever,” Santana says, rolling herself up in the covers again.

“Who said that,” Melissa says as she flips through her book, and Santana hides her smile in the blankets, hoping she can’t see.

+

She’s still in bed when Melissa leaves for her econ class, and she’s still there when she gets back, and she waits for the comment that never comes, sticking her head out slowly to see what’s going on.

“Oh there you are,” Melissa says, like she’s genuinely surprised, and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or roll her eyes. “So there’s this party tonight—”

“No,” Santana says, before she can even finish. 

“Come on, it’ll take your mind off it,” Melissa says, trying to tug the bed covers away from her like that’s all that’s keeping her in her bed.

She doesn’t know how to explain that she’s basically asking her to take her mind off her whole life, so she just says, “I’m sick,” and coughs kind of pathetically, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth. It totally used to work when she was a kid. Everything was so much simpler back then.

“Okay, fine,” Melissa says, sounding like it’s the exact opposite. “But next time okay?” Her eyes slide over to where the picture of Brittany used to be above Santana’s desk. “You can’t hide in here forever you know.”

“I know,” Santana replies quickly, and jesus, can she just get a little time to process this? It’s been a week since she basically cut herself in half and fuck off if that sounds overly dramatic, it’s the _truth_ , or at least it feels like it is right now. 

“Don’t let me stop you,” she adds, because Melissa is still staring at her sceptically.

“You’ll be okay if I go?” Melissa asks, running a hand through her hair like she’s already thinking about the party. “I thought you were _sick_.”

Santana just rolls her eyes. “I don’t need a babysitter.” She just needs people to leave her alone.

“Whatever bitch, see if I ever care for you again,” Melissa says, as she reaches for the hairbrush on her desk and the make-up bag at the end of her bed. 

“Like I even need you to care for me,” Santana says, rolling away from her as she listens to her move around the room.

“You love it,” Melissa says, appearing in front of her in a different outfit and bending down to kiss her cheek in this way that manages to be sarcastic. Santana squirms away.

“Get off me you crazy person,” she says, but she’s laughing, and Melissa flashes her a grin as she pauses by the door, and maybe she’s glad that Melissa’s been here this week. 

Melissa had never once said that it would be okay, and she appreciates that kind of honesty. 

“Don’t spend all night staring at your phone and moping, okay?” Melissa says as she goes through the door, and Santana swallows the _you don’t know my life_ as she rolls further into the covers.

+

She watches a movie on her computer, some stupid horror movie Brittany never would have watched with her—the stabbing makes her feel better for some reason—and she’s got this awful feeling she’s going to end up with the sheets up over her head as she sobs at all the old text messages still saved on her phone from Brittany anyway, even though she’s trying not to think about it.

Not that she’s done that before, shut up. Maybe she gets all those stupid teen movies a little better now is all, and, like, why a person would go out and buy ice cream or whatever. 

(She only bought one pint, thank you very much, she still has cheer practice and conditioning.)

The point is, it’s a Friday night and there’s no Brittany where there’s always been Brittany before. It’s like that movie _Pleasantville_ but flipped around, so Brittany took all the color with her and now everything’s black and white and doesn’t make any sense. 

(She’d made the mistake of watching that two nights ago, which is why she’s watching the girl who had sex in act one get her heart ripped out—literally, there’s this guy with a hook—in act two.

Not that that’s really any better.)

She shifts over onto her side in the bed and pulls the covers up a bit more, like they’ll actually protect her from all these stupid feelings, only of course it doesn’t work because why would anything be that easy? 

It’s not the first time she wished she could just stop feeling, and it didn’t work back then either.

“Ugh, don’t run _up_ the stairs, you idiot,” she mumbles at the screen.

Why are characters in horror movies so _dumb_? 

+

She showers, just because she feels like she should and she knows the bathrooms will be empty, because everyone else probably has awesome Friday night plans with the people they love. 

Yeah, she gets back in bed, so what if it’s only 8pm.

She tugs her laptop up off the floor where she left it, next to the empty plate and glass—shut up, she’ll clean it up eventually—and opens the lid, waiting for it to connect to the university network. She’s gotten good at staring at her facebook feed and trying to work out where Brittany is and what she’s doing, and maybe it’s a little creepy or whatever, but it’s Friday night and there are just some things she needs to know.

Sam, Artie and Sugar checked into the movie theatre half an hour ago, and Tina’s account is linked to Spotify so there’s a list of emo songs that she’s been listening to all day, but there’s no mention of Brittany anywhere. She even clicks over to Brittany’s profile just to check, her eyes sliding over the space where her own name used to be and settling on her last update— _havin trouble tellin how i feel but i can dance dance dance_ —three days before.

She knows it’s a line from a song but it still fucking hurts.

She closes the tab and just about manages to stop herself from throwing her computer away, wondering for half a second how she could convince her dad she needed money for a new one after only six weeks at college. Somehow she doesn’t think date night turning into lack-of-a-date night and it being all her fault is a good enough excuse.

Her computer chooses that moment to beep, and she straightens it on her lap, staring at the notification in the corner that tells her Mike just went offline. She hadn’t realized Skype was open, and hope flares in her chest for just as long as it takes her to open the window and scan her contacts list.

Brittany isn’t there, but she doesn’t know what else to do so she just sets her status to online and waits, propping her computer up on her bedside table and drawing the covers up to her chin.

People keep telling her to wait, like if she waits it won’t hurt so much, and if she waits this will all get better, so she’s going to lie here and wait for the little icon next to Brittany’s name to turn green.

It’s not like she’s got anywhere else to be.

+

She gives up just after 11pm, when her eyelids feel heavy and it’s pretty obvious Brittany is out somewhere with someone that’s not her. Which is, you know, _fine_. That’s what a break up means, so she doesn’t have any right to be pissed off about it.

(It doesn’t stop her from shutting the lid of her computer a little harder than she has to, or stop the frustrated tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, or stop the twisting in her chest when she thinks about Brittany out with somebody else, holding their hand and kissing them goodnight.)

She swipes her hand across her face quickly, rolling over so she can reach to put her computer on to her desk.

It’s been a week, it’s not like Brittany’s already found someone to replace her.

_But she will_ , a voice in the back of her head says, and she just buries her face into the pillows, hoping that will make it shut up.

It was hard getting used to the single bed that came with her dorm room, and she rolls onto her back and throws her arm out to where Brittany should be, pressed up against her telling her how they should always have single beds when they’re older so they have no excuse not to cuddle at night. “Double beds are an excuse married people make to avoid each other,” she’d say, as she wrapped herself around Santana’s body and nuzzled into her.

If she closes her eyes, and ignores the tears that threaten to fall, she can almost feel her there.

“I love you, Britt,” she whispers to the empty room, and yeah it’s pathetic, but she still feels better when she imagines that she can hear her say it back.


	2. and i tell you that a spoon ain't the best thing to use

_Brittany_

Her eyes latch onto an empty coke can next to the trashcan in the quad as she follows Sugar back to their lockers and she thinks she knows how it feels. She feels pretty empty too, most days. She wonders if someone’s drinking Santana over in Louisville and then her chest gets tight and it’s a struggle just to breathe.

Sam’s leaning against the lockers waiting for them, and he looks at her oddly when she gulps in some air. “Are you okay?” he asks, and it’s like the eighth or eighty ninth time he’s asked that this week and she’s starting to run out of answers.

“I just forgot to breathe,” she says, almost the truth but also not. 

“I do that sometimes too,” he says earnestly. “It’s like... when you remember to think about it it doesn’t work you know?”

She smiles just for a second, sort of in his direction and sort of not, and Sam ducks his head, trying to hide behind his hair even though it’s too short to do that anymore. 

“Never mind that,” Sugar says, snapping round to look at them as she slams her locker shut. “Movies tonight? Artie and I are in, so obviously you guys have to come too,” she says, starting to walk and not checking to see if they’re following. Brittany watches Sam’s feet until they start to move and then hers do too, only it’s like she wants to dodge away because sometimes feet crush cans, like to recycle them or whatever. 

Sometimes she feels like Sugar and Sam are the feet that are gonna crunch her up. And it’s like they’re supposed to recycle but everyone forgets and throws out a can once in a while, even the people with really good memories like Santana.

“I’m in if Britt is,” Sam says, throwing his arm around her neck, and it’s weird but she guesses arms can be feet sometimes too because it feels super heavy around her shoulders.

“Britt?” Sugar prompts, as they slam through the doors at the end of the hallway.

“I was just thinking about cans,” Brittany tells her, because she was, and Sugar’s eyebrows scrunch up in confusion. She doesn’t say anything, just hikes her bag a little higher on her shoulders and waits for Sugar to forget. 

It’s okay, metaphors are confusing, so.

“I have to babysit my sister tonight,” she lies, and watches Sam’s face get sad.

“Bummer,” he says, as Sugar rolls her eyes and tells her she should outsource to someone else, but she doesn’t want her sister to go to India or whatever and her parents are going to be home anyway.

+

Sam walks her to the end of her driveway, even though he wasn’t supposed to get off the bus yet, and he doesn’t feel so much like a foot when he hugs her and tells her he’ll call her tomorrow, in case she wants to hang out. 

“I think I’m washing my hair,” she says, twisting her feet against the sidewalk. “And helping Lord Tubbington do his chores.” He’s back on Atkins but it hasn’t really worked yet so he’s still pretty big and he does a good job of hiding her from things she doesn’t want to do.

“Then I’ll text you. Weekends are a really long time to go without phone calls,” he says, like it’s nothing, but she knows who he means. It’s like _two seconds_ is a really long time to go without a phone call when the person you really want to talk to won’t call you anymore.

Maybe she could get Lord Tubbington to hide her cellphone for her too.

“Yeah, okay,” she says, even though she’s never really been good at doing two things at once. She always ends up screwing one of them up, like when she tried to do her Math homework in English last year. Or when she tried to do her Math homework when Santana was in her room.

“Cool,” he says. “Bye, Britt.”

He watches her all the way inside, until she turns and waves at the door—waves _at Sam_ from the door, waving at the door would be weird—and watches him stomp off down the block. 

She drops her bag and shoes by the door and thinks about how Artie had refused to cast understudies for the play because they didn’t need the safety net, and how it sucks because Sam would have been a pretty good understudy if he wasn’t being Kenickie. She likes him being Kenickie though, because she’s pretty sure that makes her Danny and Danny’s totally cool, so.

And she can totally dance better than that _Tangled_ kid anyway.

She goes into the kitchen to get herself a glass of water and then she remembers that Santana isn’t Sandy even though if Santana wanted her to she’d totally wear Sam’s letter jacket for her and sing and stuff. Then she gets stuck wondering what kind of shape Santana needs her to be, like maybe she needs to be more rectangular or whatever, and she pours the rest of the water down the sink, leaving the glass sitting on the counter.

+

She does her homework, because people keep saying sticking to a routine is good, like if you just keep putting one foot in front of the other eventually you get to your destination, even if it has been the most boring trip ever.

Not that Math is boring, but it is hard, and she scratches her pencil against the paper slowly wondering who ever thought replacing numbers with letters and adding them all together was a good idea. They never add up right, just end up sitting next to each other on the page until they spell out all these words that no one seems to understand. And it’s like, if Math wants to be English she’s not gonna stop it, but pretending it doesn’t is just gonna hurt it in the long run.

Being in the musical isn’t the same without Santana. She hopes they have musicals in Louisville too. She probably should have asked before they stopped calling each other, just to make sure.

+

“Hey honey,” her mom says, pressing a kiss to her forehead as she drops her handbag on the kitchen counter. “Doing your homework?”

It’s still weird that she asks, and she just nods, stuck in the middle of trying to get a B closer to the S. Math homework is so mean, no wonder everyone hates it. 

“Need any help?” 

“I got it, mom,” she says, as she lifts the sheet up to show her. “There’s just another couple questions.”

“I’m so proud of you,” her mom says, kissing her on the head again as she goes past, and Brittany wishes she wouldn’t be, just because she added a few numbers together. 

But maybe if she worked out how to move the letters back together, she could be proud of her then.

+

She gets stuck on the last question, and she signs into Skype just in case Artie is there to help. He is, and she copies the question out carefully and then types _= ??_ at the end.

_you know i’m not a calculator_ , he types and she rolls her eyes at the webcam just in case he’s getting his robot buddies to watch her.

_can u help me work this out_ , she sends back, and after a minute he starts typing, a line at a time, how to get to the answer, so by the time he gets there she can type the solution before he does.

She wishes everything else was so easy to understand, like has there always been this really easy way from A to B if only someone would take the time to explain it to her? Even Santana forgets to explain things to her sometimes, or, like, she says they’re going to F when really they’re going to BU via LV and 2Snr and some other letters that she didn’t even think were letters to begin with.

_are u coming to the movies??_ Artie asks, when she looks back up at the screen, and she presses her hand over her webcam and shakes her head, fumbling against the trackpad with her fingers until she manages to set her status to invisible so no one knows she’s there.

She still sticks a post it over the webcam though, just to make sure.

+

Her dad gets home from work late, and he brings pizza with him, shouting up the stairs for her to come down.

“Did you finish your homework?” he asks when she grabs a plate and a slice and she just nods automatically.

“Yeah,” she says, and then blinks at him when he peers at her closely like he’s making sure she’s not lying. “I showed mom,” she adds, as her sister pushes her out of the way to get to the food.

“I did all my homework too,” she says proudly, stuffing a slice of pizza into her mouth. She chews for a second before she adds, “So can I go stay over at Jaime’s house?”

No one’s paying attention to her after that, so she just scoops some of the cheese off her pizza and drops it into Lord Tubbington’s bowl and then takes a couple of bites before she throws the rest into the trash. 

It doesn’t taste as good when Santana isn’t there to share it with her, and she’s pretty sure Coach Sue wouldn’t approve anyway, so.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says, when she heads for the door, because Lord Tubbington is eyeballing her as he licks at the tomato sauce on his paws. 

+

Her computer’s still open when she gets back upstairs, still playing the playlist iTunes had put together for her. She thinks iTunes must be feeling sad too, because it’s doing a pretty good job of playing all the songs she’s been hearing in her head this week whenever she thinks of Santana. Maybe it should be called Psychic playlists instead of Genius playlists, because that would actually make a lot more sense. 

Adam Lambert starts singing about how if he wanted to leave he would have by now and she wishes Santana could hear it because Santana really is the only thing in this world she’d die without, and then she has to skip the song because everything gets kind of blurry around the edges and she has to wipe her eyes. 

She doesn’t recognise the next song, which means it’s probably something Santana downloaded for her over the summer, but there’s some girl singing about sharks in the water underneath the bed and she draws her feet up from where they’re hanging over the edge, just because. It sounds kind of happy but she doesn’t think it is, and she doesn’t understand why some songs have sad lyrics and happy music, like how the song said _I’ll never leave you alone_ but it didn’t mean that when Santana sang it. 

Sad songs should just be sad and happy songs should just be happy, because then at least she’d understand how she’s supposed to feel about it once the song has finished. She hits skip again, because the song’s confusing and she’s starting to worry about those sharks under the bed, like maybe that’s what Santana was so scared of all those years. 

_Have you ever thrown a fist full of glitter in the air?_ Pink asks, and then she wonders why anyone would throw glitter in the air anyway. She’s pretty sure it’d just make a mess, and who wants to spend hours picking glitter up off of the floor? Or maybe that’s the point, like it’s so hard that no one wants to do it but it’s worth it in the end. Or like, maybe it’s pretty in the air before it all falls down? Or once it’s back in the tube. 

Metaphors are important, she’s pretty sure, or at least that’s what her English teacher says. She just wishes they’d make more _sense_.

Her phone keeps buzzing against her desk, but she knows it’s Sam or Sugar or Artie and she just ignores it. It’s not their fault they don’t know about Fridays. She’s pretty sure she, Santana and that girl who can’t pick a seat are the only ones who do, so.

She hopes Santana has friends in Louisville. She probably should have asked that before she stopped calling too. 

“You’re not helping,” she tells iTunes, when Taylor Swift starts singing, and she hits skip again before it can get to the chorus.

+

She almost doesn’t look when the notification appears in the corner of her screen, and at first she thinks she’s seeing things because she was just thinking about Santana, but when she blinks and Santana’s name is still in the corner she clicks over to her Skype window quickly and sees the little green icon next to Santana’s name. 

She’s still invisible, but she reaches up to pull the post it off the webcam, just in case. 

She doesn’t know if it counts if Santana doesn’t know she’s there, but it’s a Friday, and she feels better knowing Santana isn’t out somewhere else either. She presses her fingers against Santana’s name on the screen and sets her computer down so she can roll onto her stomach, folding her arms so she can rest her chin on them.

The bed still feels too big, but Santana’s out there somewhere, like maybe they could be singing the song from _An American Tail_ and neither of them know it, but they’re totally harmonising and stuff, just the same. Safety nets help sometimes, even if Artie doesn’t think so, and she feels a little less like she’s falling now than she did earlier, even if Santana can’t catch her the same way she used to.

+

Santana goes offline just after 11pm, and Brittany blinks sleepily, rubbing her hand over her eyes.

“Goodnight, Santana,” she murmurs, before she sets her computer down on the floor and grabs the edge of her covers, folding them over herself as she curls up, not bothering to get under them. 

“I love you,” she whispers after a moment, even though Santana isn’t there to hear her, just because it’s Friday and everybody says routines are important. The bed’s still too big, and Santana isn’t there to say it back, so she curls up tighter and pulls the covers up over her head, until all the light’s gone and she can go back to sleep.


End file.
